Did you time it? How many seconds?
>The SCAN takes forever. I think the use of a cursor makes a difference.
>Thanks for the reply.
>
>>On difference may be that the faster method is working a CURSOR, rather than a DBF.
>>How fast does a scan or do loop run? Ex:
>>use in 0 table1 order fieldx
>>use in 0 table 2 order fieldx
>>create cursor tab1 (fieldxx c(7))
>>select table2
>>scan while !eof()
>>if seek(table2.fieldx,[table1])
>> * ignore
>>else
>> append blank in tab1
>> repl tab1.fieldxx with table2.fieldx
>>endif
>>endscan
>>
>>
>>>In VFP 6, two free tables, table1 (739,068 records) and table2 (609,862 records) each has a fieldx which is a 7 byte long character representation of a number which is unique within each table. Each table has an index tag on fieldx. The following:
>>>
>>>SELECT fieldx FROM table2 WHERE fieldx NOT IN (SELECT fieldx FROM table1)
>>>
>>>This correctly return 31,183 records in 1002.50 seconds.
>>>
>>>SELECT fieldx FROM table1 INTO CURSOR tab1 NOFI
>>>SELECT fieldx FROM table2 INTO CURSOR tab2 NOFI
>>>SELECT fieldx FROM tab2 WHERE fieldx NOT IN (SELECT fieldx FROM tab1)
>>>
>>>This correctly return 31,183 records in 25.60 seconds.
>>>
>>>Before each run I made sure that VFP was the only process running on the Windows 95 machine. Pretty strange.